A Time of Omens (54 page)

Whether it was dweomer or only shrewd tracking, Rhodry would never know, but it seemed to him that they reached the bandit camp remarkably soon and ended up in a remarkably good position, too, on a wooded rise behind the enemy’s position just out of earshot. From there, Dar sent four of his men ahead on foot to take out the enemy guards. Just as the dawn was lightening the sky, the four returned, grinning at how easy a job they’d had. Jill swung herself down from the saddle and let Rhodry regain his place.

“Your Grace?” she whispered to the gwerbret. “May the gods ride with you. I’ll see you after the battle.”

Although she turned and jogged off back the way they’d come, Rhodry had no time to watch where she might be going. It would be impossible to keep surprise on their side for more than a few moments. When the gwerbret drew a javelin from the sheath beneath his right leg, every man of the army did the same—with a horrendous jingling of tack.

“Let’s go!” Cadmar yelled.

The men kicked their horses to a trot and swept up the side of the rise just as a ragged scream of panic burst out down in the camp. The warband crested the rise like a wave and charged, screaming war cries. They could see the enemy rushing round, rolling free of blankets, grabbing for
weapons. Behind the camp ran the river, cutting off retreat. Off to the left, some hundred yards away from the main camp, roped-together prisoners jumped to their feet and started cheering and sobbing out the gwerbret’s name. To the right, at about the same distance, panicked horses began to neigh and rear.

“Throw!” Cadmar yelled.

A shower of steel-tipped javelins flashed ahead of the charge and swooped down among the scurrying bandits. With a rush and whisper elven hunting arrows rained down from the side. Rhodry saw a few hits, but what he was hoping for was panic, and panic was what he got. Screaming, shoving one another, the bandits milled around and grabbed at weapons. Dashing among them, wrapped in a cloak, was an impossibly tall man, waving a sword and howling orders. No one listened. The bandits broke and ran as the warband swept down upon them with drawn swords. Leaning, slashing, the riders raced through the camp, pulled up, and parted like water round a rock to turn at the riverbank and gallop back again. Here and there a few desperate men were making a stand, but most were running. Some, swords drawn and ready, were heading for the prisoners.

“Cut them off!” Rhodry howled it out, then gave his voice over to his bubbling berserk laugh.

With a squad behind him he raced at an angle toward the would-be murderers, and now he was riding to dodge anything in his way. Swords flashed to meet him; he swung down as he passed. Ahead, the little pack of bandits heard hooves and turned to make their stand. The squad hit them in full slaughter. Rhodry’s horse suddenly screamed and reared. He brought it down, rolled off as it fell to its knees, and struck up, killing the man who was swinging down at him. Somewhere Yraen was yelling at him, but Rhodry could only laugh. He grabbed another man’s shield from the ground and slashed another bandit across the knees. When the man fell, screaming, Rhodry scrambled to his feet and killed him, stabbing him through the throat.

Yraen’s words finally forced their way through to his mind.

“We’ve got this lot! The leader’s trying to escape.”

Yraen was waving his sword, red and blooded, in the
general direction of the wagons, which were standing behind the prisoners. With the squad following him like a captain, Rhodry raced off, dodging round the sobbing women and children, seeing his enemy’s cloak flash and flutter just ahead as he dodged through the carts and leaning wagon trees. Although there were a couple of horses tethered beyond, the leader would never reach them in time. Huge as he was, he was clumsy on the ground, so bowlegged that he was waddling more than running.

The leader swirled to face them, and as he turned, he tore off his cloak and whipped it round and round one massive forearm, an improvised shield. The men behind Rhodry howled, half a shriek, half a war cry, and even Rhodry himself hesitated for the trace of a moment, just long enough for their enemy to get his back against a wagon. This was no human being that they were facing. By some visual trick, without the enveloping cloak he seemed even larger, well over six feet tall, perhaps even a bit over seven, his height crowned by a huge mane of hair as stiff as any Dawntime hero’s—indeed, it seemed to have been bleached out with lime in just that way, so that it rose stiff and dead-pale straight from his black eyebrows and poured up and over his back like a waterfall. His face might have been any color naturally, because blue, purple, and green tattoos covered it so thickly you couldn’t see a trace of skin. His massive hands bore red and purple tattoos like gloves. He drew back thin lips from white teeth, fanged like a wolf’s mouth, and snarled.

Rhodry started to laugh.

“Get back!” he choked out between howls of demon-mirth. “Get back and leave him to me!”

He might have been only a silver dagger, but every man behind him followed his order gladly. His opponent laughed as well, a rumble under his breath. He jumped to the wagon bed and dropped to a fighting crouch.

“Shield you got, man. But I got taller.”

“And a fair fight it is, then.”

Even though he was chortling like a mad ferret, Rhodry’s mind was icy calm, telling him that the victory in this scrap depended on the strength of his left arm. He was going to have to hold his shield up high, like one of those sunshades the fine court ladies in Dun Deverry sported,
and pray it held against the other’s blows. With the shield low he feinted in, slowly it seemed to him, oh, so slowly moving cross the uneven ground, saw a glint of steel moving, swung up the shield and caught the huge blade full on the boss. The brass plate sliced like butter; the blade stuck, just for the briefest of moments, but Rhodry got a hard stab on his enemy’s upper arm. Blood spurted thick and flowed slowly, oh, so slowly, down the sleeve.

Rhodry danced back just in time as the leader sliced backhanded in a blow that would have gutted him had it landed. For a moment they panted for breath, glaring at each other; then Rhodry began sidling toward his opponent’s left. Caught as he was against the wagon protecting his back, the other was forced to turn slightly—then all at once lunged. Just in time Rhodry flung up his shield, heard the wood crack in half, and stabbed as fast and as hard as he could. Later he would realize that this stab had been his last and only chance, but as the pieces of shield fell away from the handle he knew only laughter, welling out of him like a tide of fire as he thrust with every bit of strength and skill he possessed. The enormous sword swung up over his head, hovered there, trembled down, then fell from a dying hand as his opponent grunted once and crumpled over Rhodry’s sword, buried in his guts. When Rhodry pulled it free, he realized that blind instinct had made him angle the blade. Dark heart’s blood gushed out with the steel.

As the berserk mist cleared, Rhodry staggered back, gulping for breath, sweating rivers down his back, half-dizzy, half-dazed, unsure for that moment exactly where he was or what fight he’d just won. All round him he heard cheers and shouting, managed to recognize Cadmar’s bellow as the gwerbret shoved his way through what proved to be a crowd.

“Oh, may Great Bel preserve us,” the gwerbret whispered. “What is that?”

“I wouldn’t, know, Your Grace.”

For a moment, while he got his breath back, Rhodry studied his dead enemy’s face and got his second shock of the day. The tattoo designs were all elven. He’d seen many like them on horse gear and painted tents out in the Westlands: animal forms, floral vines, and even, here and there, a letter or two from the Elvish syllabary.

“Let Jill through,” Cadmar was yelling. “Ye gods, someone get our Rhodry some water.”

Jill, it turned out, was carrying a skin of just that. She handed it over, then stood for a long time staring down at the corpse. In the bright sun Rhodry was struck again by how thin her face was, all pale stretched skin and fine bone, as delicate as a bird’s wing. He gulped water down while she went on with her study of the dead man.

“I was afraid of this,” she said at last. “He’s exactly what I thought he’d be.”

“Indeed?” Cadmar said. “And would you mind telling us what that is?”

“Not at all, Your Grace.” She reached into her shirt and took out a stained and faded silk pouch, opened that, and handed over a thin bone plaque, a square about three inches on a side.

Rhodry stepped round to peer over the gwerbret’s shoulder. The plaque sported a picture, graved into the yellowed bone and stained with traces of color. Once, he supposed, the portrait had been as vivid as a flower garden, but even his utterly untrained eye perceived it as ancient, older than anything he’d ever seen, older, perhaps, than the kingdom itself. In such a skilled drawing that every hair, every fold of cloth, seemed real and tangible, the picture displayed the head and shoulders of a being much like the one that lay dead at their feet: the same mane of hair, the same ridged face and heavy jaw, but while indeed this face was tattooed, the marks were only rough lines and dots. Cadmar swore under his breath.

“Jill, where did you get this? What are these creatures?”

“I got it far south of Bardek, Your Grace, on an island where some of the Westfolk live. As for what, well, the elves call them Meradan, demons, but their own name for themselves is Gel da’Thae: the Horsekin.”

All the old stories he’d been trying to remember rose to the surface of Rhodry’s mind.

“The Hordes!”

“Just that, silver dagger.” Jill smiled, a brief twitch of her mouth. “His grace doubtless remembers those old tales about the cities of the Westfolk, the ones destroyed back in the Dawntime by demons? Well, destroyed they were, but by real flesh and blood.” She nudged the corpse with her
foot. “This flesh and blood, Your Grace. Huh, they don’t seemed to have changed a great deal, have they? They’ve learned a good bit about tattooing, that’s all. They’re still as bloodthirsty.”

Cadmar nodded, his mouth grim, and handed back the bit of bone.

“And they’ve come east,” Rhodry put in. “That bodes ill.”

“You always had a gift for understatement, didn’t you?” Jill was putting the plaque away.

“But what do they want?” Cadmar said.

“I wouldn’t know for certain, but I’ll wager it’s the same things they’ve always wanted: land, slaves, jewelry and other such trinkets.” Jill looked up at last. “Look at his hands, Your Grace. See how some of his fingers have been cut off? Their warriors do that to themselves, you see, so they’ll be fit for no craft but war.”

Cadmar shuddered.

“And how do you know all this?”

“I read it in an elven book, written by one of the survivors of the Great Burning. That’s what they call the fall of the cities. It was over a thousand years ago now, but the elves remember it, clear as clear. I wish I could have brought you this book, for your scribe to read aloud in your hall. You and your men need to know what we’re facing.”

Cadmar threw up his head like a startled stag. Rhodry laughed aloud.

“Oh, my lady Death’s in for a fine time of it now. Her dun will fill with her guests, her tables feast thousands. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it, Jill?”

“I am. Your Grace, I pray to every god in the sky and under the earth that I’m wrong, but in my heart I know that the worst war that ever the Westlands have seen lies ahead of us.”

“And soon?” the gwerbret said.

“It will be, Your Grace. Very soon.”

Rhodry threw back his head and howled with laughter, choking and bubbling out of his very soul All through the shattered camp the warband fell dead-silent to listen, and not a man there felt his blood run anything but cold.

With all the prisoners and suchlike, it took the warband two full days to ride home. With Otho and a squad of dwarven axmen standing around her, Carra was waiting at the gates of Cadmar’s dun when they walked their horses up the hill. At first, in the dust and confusion, she found it impossible to tell one man from another, and her heart began pounding in dread, but Dar broke free of the pack at last and ran to her.

“Thank every god in the sky!” She flung herself into his arms. While she sniveled into his filthy shirt, he stroked her hair.

“Here, here, my love! I’m home safe again, just like I promised you.”

Otho snorted profoundly.

“Egotistical young dolt,” he remarked in a conversational tone of voice. “Wasn’t you we were worried about.”

“What?” Dar let her go and turned to confront the dwarf. “What are you saying, old man?”

“I’m saying what I said, you stupid elven fop. Someone tried to kill your wife while you were running around the countryside playing warrior.”

Dar went dead-still.

“Well, but they didn’t,” Carra said. “I mean, that sounds stupid, but Otho and his men have kept me safe, really they have.”

“And for that they’ll have my undying thanks.”

She had never heard Dar speak like that, so low, so still, each word careful and distinct, and now he was trembling in rage.

“Where’s the man who tried to harm her?”